Well done, Dr. Oord. I do think that there needs to be some discussion on the centrality of love in Christan mediums and media and the level of comfort we get from proposing, listening, and watching our own ideas.
    The statment ” Believers in the past and present draw from a rich tradition of Christian experiences and practices. Christian hymns, devotional readings, liturgies, prayers, sermons, websites and videos” should show” does not take that into account.

Thanks for that! Really looking forward to reading the book to see how you develop your ideas.

I have not read very many theological books so I was surprised to hear that theologians often leave love as an afterthought or leave it out entirely. I have always believed that love is central to the Story that God has written. Love is interwoven in every aspect of life. If a theologian leaves out love in his or her theology then there is no point to that theology. Love, I think, is so central that to leave it out is to miss something huge! Without, it I cannot see how that theology can hold together very well.

You are making my “must read list” longer and longer with almost every blog entry! 

Looking forward to the book. Congrats Tom.

I agree wholeheartedly. Love is the differentiating factor between Christianity and other world religions. When Jesus commanded the ‘golden rule’ He changed it from a restriction of not doing bad to others and made it a do good to others. This is not merely getting along with others by not harming them but actively loving them as he commanded. Christians today are too often known for what we do not do; drugs, premarital sex or watch certain movies, ect. I think instead Christians should be known for what we do; love the outcast, sinner and enemies.

It is surprising to me also that Theologians don’t emphasize the Love that is central to the very way Christians behave.
Without Love we would not even been saved. Love was central to what Jesus and God felt for us, it was what spurred them into the plan for Jesus to come down to earth and save us.
For Love not to be central is baffling to me.

Love is central, and is the way we all need to live our lives! Loving one another is the way to be, treating one another as the way we want to be treated. Loving thy god with all our power, through all the troubles in the world is what he wants us to do. By doing this we provide a solid friendship with a lot of people and we are able to enjoy one another more the way we are able to look out for one another. I do not feel obligated to love God, I feel that loving one another and doing the right thing all will work out in the best for one another, and if I don’t love someone one or something God does not punish me for that.

I tend to agree with you. It has been my experience, as limited as it may be, that Christian theologians leave out the importance of love. It’s nice to see that that fact is starting to change.

This is a very relevant point. It amazes me that any theological approach to subjects can leave this vital part out. I can’t think of a subject where love can be left out of the equation. I’d like to see if anyone come up with a subject that does not include love. For example, you cannot argue the Eucharist-because even though it is tradition its underlying symbol professes the ultimate sacrifice and love of Jesus so that we can have a relationship with God. From an idealist perspective I might go far enough to say that love is the answer to all of our debates in theology-but of course that would be a Christian’s blanket answer so I’d have to take that statement back until I’ve done thorough research on it.

You are asserting in this excerpt that love is largely underestimated by theologians as a central pillar of Christianity. But you also say that “[m]ost Christians” understand that love is at the center of ethics.

Is this a book for the theologians? Perhaps to reawaken those who have become so engaged in analysis that they forgot what most Christians seem to understand instinctively? Or does the average Christian understand the centrality of love, but not the implications on how it should affect their lives?

I understand why so many individuals and theologians do not focus on Love. I see more examples of hate emanating from the “followers” of God than love. To some extent I think it is because that more typically makes the news however, I see a lot of scared Christians on a day to day bases who convert that fear into hate. No wonder people have a sued image of God.
There are also a lot of questions that arise which seem to question Love as the central part of God, the problem of evil, why we are here in the first place, why we are sinning by taking ourselves out…

Love is a defining quality of Gods perfection and often times theologians only touch on love as this (one of Gods qualities) and not the application we should use to apply love in our lives as christians. The bible speaks of how “God so loved the world He gave his one and only Son, so that whoever believes in him shall have eternal life.” In my eyes God puts more emphasis on how we should love than worry about how God is going to love. Proof of my statement comes in the form of the 1st and 2nd commandment.

I agree with you that love is the central quality of God and the message that Jesus brought to us. However, I do have some question on what role the other qualities or characteristics should take? God is love so obviously His love affects all parts of His character and attribute, but does that make those other characteristics less significant?

I wonder if the tendency of modern period theologians to under-emphasize love as central is connected to the tendency of the same to over-emphasize the sovereignty of God.  Taking the sovereignty of God to its extreme expression leads to a notion of divine coercion: If God is in control of absolutely everything that happens, God is in control of individual “choices” of humans’ day-to-day lives.  Thus the human has no real freedom, but is predetermined and cannot truly make his or her own choices.
Divine coercion makes it difficult to speak of a relationship of love between the human and God.  Given Dr. Oord’s definition of love, one who is coerced cannot act intentionally to respond to another as the one has no true will by which to act.  These two concepts, divine sovereignty and mutual love, create difficulties when one tries to claim full expressions of each.

I agree that love is definitely central to the Christian faith.  I have heard this taught over and over, and it is written many times in the Bible.  I truly believe that love is the most important thing.  However, I still find myself unsure about how to “express” this love, especially when it comes to “loving ones enemy.”  Does this mean that we always choose the more peaceful route and turn the other cheek?  If so, does this really do any good, and is it really possible?  I really wish there were absolute answers to these questions.

One of the most obvious and the most striking ideas presented in this section was the outright absence of love within published Christian theologies. Although there can be many reasons for this, the one that stands out for me (from experience in either environments influenced or founded in Christian teachings) has been the necessity of omitting terms that hold some kind of relative or individual interpretations. Because the goal is to avoid criticisms, misinterpretations, misunderstandings, or the negation of one’s argument, interpretations necessary to fully understanding broader terms are avoided. I struggle, however, because “love” is broad, open-ended, and subjective. How then are we (as Christians) supposed to more adequately represent a key element of our theology? How do we offer an interpretation when so many misrepresent “Christian love” to non-Christians? Can we unpack this idea into a more manageable entity when each of us experiences love in different ways?

I agree with Kara on the fact that it seems strange that many authors have seen love as an after thought. Love is the one thing that every human seems to be in agreement about. Not necessarily types of love, or how to love, but that we all need love and should share it. Not only can we enjoy sharing love with one another, but the love that we receive from God is unfathomable.

Paul says that without love, we are nothing.  This little passage for me is amazing i look ath those five words that Paul says and began to think about those and i believe that he is so right.  I am going to talk about sports with this passage, football is a sport that most people when they talk about it they say be mean, kill the opponent hurt them. But it reminded me about what Bobby Bowden once said “I taught my players to love one and other.  If there was love on a team it created a brother hood. If you have brothers they will fight each other like crazy, but you have someone else that once to fight those brother and your going to have to beat up all the brothers.” I believe that this can be used with christians if we all love we can create a “brotherhood” a unity among us that we can bring others into that unity and make us all stronger for loving one and other.  As non christians begin to watch they will see how we all love one and other and want to love and have what we want.

Dr. Oord.  I’ve had a small epiphany reading this excerpt:  When Jesus condenses the purpose of into two commandments, the only verb He uses is LOVE!  How powerful.  I feel blind having never seen that before.  Thank you for asserting the primacy of love in contemporary Christian thought.

I am not one to really read many theology books, so I myself was surprised to hear that theologians leave out love in a lot of their theology. Love is very central to Christianity and to leave it out seems wrong. God talks most about love, like you said “The greatest of this is love” and the many other verses centered around love from the Bible. I do not see how someone could leave the most important part out. Its like forgetting the peanut butter in a peanut butter sandwich… just doesn’t work.

This is so true! Many times the center of Christian theology is so focused on using the correct and latest theological lingo, that the simple greatest commandment from God is overlooked. The centrality of love is something every human being is capable of achieving, and that’s the genius of God at work.

Dr. Oord makes a great observation about theologians, or anyone for that matter, leaving the virtue or quality of love out of their personal theologies. How is it that especially people who spend their lives studying scriptures and God are so quick to over look the most important one them all?

I think that we may sing Christian hymns, read our devotional readings, liturgies, prayers, sermons, websites and videos, but all of those things are abstract to a certain degree. There still isn’t a cut and dry definition of love that comes from those things. So I would say that the average person hasn’t even thought about what the word love really means. I’ll be the first to say that I never really thought about it until this class. The only thing I thought about love was from DC Talk… “Love is a Verb.” That was my definition of love that came from a song.

I am going to comment on this again after reading it the first time i truly to believe the word love is the central theme for the Bible.  I also believe the central theme for our life and for Christians is the word love.  The word love will always be the most challenging word to figure out and we will maybe never fully understand it but we will always strive to figure it out.  One thing that i love with this is its such a challenge for all of us to figure out our own love in our lives.